Authoress' notes: The following story takes place during the Yuuzhan Vong war. Please read and enjoy all of my stories, please leave me feedback, public or via email. ahandcuffgirl(at)yahoo(dot)com
Alema Rar raised the
macrobinoculars to her goggles and and observed the prison. She needed the goggles because her eyes would
freeze without them. The current
temperature was about fifty degrees below freezing, with winds about thirty
klicks an hour. At least it wasn't snowing
right now though. Still, Alema Rar
didn't like the freezing cold conditions one bit.

She was wearing heavy
cold-weather gear from head to toe. It
was white and light-gray to blend in with the snow and ice on the ground. Her hood even had thick sleeves covering her
sensitive lekku. The gear was supposed
to be rated to over seventy degrees below freezing, and wind over fifty klicks
an hour. In spite of the rating, Alema
Rar's poor lekku were freezing, and the rest of her wasn't much better.

The reason she was observing
the prison was that the Peace Brigade slime were holding about two thousand
prisoners there. The scarheads weren't
expected to pick them up for several more days.
With a small window to act, Alema Rar, along with twenty-four special-ops
troopers, had been sent to free them.

I had to notice that Peace
Brigader on Abiimir, Alema Rar
thought as she shivered in the cold.

"I hear that about a thousand
klicks north of here the temperature is all the way up to freezing," Lieutenant
Koflan said cheerfully from the snow next to her. He practically had to shout to be heard over
the wind.

Alema Rar lowered the
macrobinoculars. "More like three
thousand," she responded gloomily. "And
the wind would still be blowing forty klicks an hour," she added as she
shivered slightly from the cold.

The Peace Brigader had been
easy enough to notice. The rest of the
cantina's patrons were a depressed lot of sentients, no doubt from HoloNews
showing the destruction the hordes of scarheads tearing their way across the
galaxy had sown. The skinny, forty
something year old male human however, seemed quite content with the state of
affairs. The contrast was easy to pick
up with the Force.

At first Alema Rar had just
wanted to wipe the carefully guarded but smug grin right off his face. She voiced her plans to her companions, three
humans and a Noghri, just in case they wanted to help out. Then Lieutenant Koflan had to suggest that
the slime might be Peace Brigade, and therefore might have some intelligence. Military, at least.

So instead of breaking a few
of his bones in a cantina fight, she had lured him outside with a smile and a
few whispered words. Then she and her
friends hauled him off to a more secure area, and found out if he knew anything. Between a growling Noghri flashing her claws
at him on one side, and Alema Rar pretending to seduce him from the other, he
was spilling his guys in no time. It
turned out that the frakkin' scum regularly delivered supplies to a Peace
Brigade prison. He has just made a run,
and they had about two thousand New Republic citizens.

Naturally, since she reported
the details of the operation to the New Republic command, they tasked her with
the mission. Luckily the fellow had told
them that the prison had very little defenses, and less than fifty guards.

The prison was just a few
buildings above ground. One was a
command center, with an observation post above it, and a HoloNet communications
antenna on top of that. The observation
post was perhaps five meters above the command center, and the comm antenna ten
meters above that.

The second, and largest,
building was barracks for off-duty guards, and storage. The third building was access to the
prisoners, who were kept below ground, in twenty hundred-person units.

There were supposed to be
eight-to-ten guards in the command center, plus four more in the observation
post. The guards rarely went into the
prisoner areas, and never patrolled outside.
They delivered food to the prison, and the prisoners took care of
themselves. The main security feature
was the deadly cold, along with the fact that none of the prisoners had any
sort of footwear, and only minimal clothing.

If they escaped, they would
die from the cold in a matter of minutes.
Anytime the the doors to the prison area were opened, the command center
and barracks blast doors were closed. If
the prisoners caused problems, then their unit could be opened to the elements
as well.

After observing the prison a
bit, Alema Rar and her soldiers decided on sending a small team in to take out
the four guards in the observation post, and the HoloNet antenna. Then the other team would storm the command
center. Between the two teams they would
also keep the rest of the guards pinned inside the barracks if necessary.

Alema Rar took a deep, frosty
breath and reached out with the Force.
None of the guards in the observation post seemed to be looking their
way. In fact, they didn't seem to be too
alert at all.

She nodded towards Lieutenant
Koflan, then climbed to her feet, and began slowly moving forward in a crouch
through the deep snow with her six Noghri.
They were moving into position to attack the observation post. Lieutenant Koflan's team of a dozen would be
following them, to hit the command center, and hold the barracks.

A two person sniper and
observation team was a little over three hundred meters away. Further out were two more pairs of troopers,
with each pair manning a rocket launcher, and also acting as observers.

It was a lot for her to
handle, but fortunately Lieutenant Koflan was happy to help her out. The Noghri mostly needed everyone to stay out
of their way. Alema Rar had almost sent
them ahead on their own, but the Force had told her to go with them instead of
Lieutenant Koflan's team.

Nearly ten minutes later
Alema Rar and her team were in position.
She gave her comlink a quick double tap to alert Lieutenant Koflan. She received a single beep of acknowledgment,
which she responded to with another tap of her comlink. Since Lieutenant Koflan's team consisted of
nine Humans, a Wookiee, a Devaronian, and another Twi'lek, they couldn't move
quite as fast as six Noghri and a Jedi.

When Lieutenant Koflan
finally alerted Alema Rar that his team was ready, she immediately signaled the
Noghri attack, and dashed forward the last dozen meters.

With the knee-deep snow
pressing in on her lower legs and feet, Alema Rar wasn't quite able to leap
onto the roof of the command center. She
was able to get high enough to pull herself up though. Three of the Noghri stopped at the base of
the wall, and propelled their comrades up.
Then the second three quickly reached down and helped pull the first
three up.

While the Noghri were
climbing up, Alema Rar reached out with the Force, and made sure the guards in
the observation post above her hadn't noticed them. They still didn't seem to be paying much
attention to anything.

The most important thing was
to make sure they didn't get a distress call off. The problem was, Alema Rar didn't know if the
observation post could send one, or just the command center. That meant they had to take out the four
Peace Brigaders in the observation post before they had a chance, just to be
sure.

Alema Rar and her twenty-four
special-operation soldiers had arrived in system in an old converted passenger
liner. It could easily hold
twenty-five-hundred passengers. It
couldn't land on this iceball though.
They had two smaller transports that would ferry the prisoners to the
passenger liner. One could carry close
to two hundred people. Alema Rar and her
team had landed in a second transport that could carry up to forty people. The passenger liner and larger transport were
hiding behind a moon three planets out.

A few moments later, one of
the Noghri was on the ladder, his hands on the hatch leading into the
observation post. Alema Rar was hanging
off the side next to him. The hatch was
locked, but it only had basic security.
The Noghri had it unlocked in seconds.
He glanced over to her, and Alema Rar nodded her head in approval.

As he opened the hatch Alema
Rar squatted on the ladder in preparation.
She had her blaster carbine across her chest, attached to her combat
vest with a pair of straps. The carbine
was specially modified so her lightsaber could be attached to the underside of
the barrel, as a bayonet. There was a
switch just above the trigger that would ignite the lightsaber. The moment the hatch was open, she leapt up and
through it, igniting her lightsaber as she did.

The four guards must have thought
they were receiving visitors or something.
They stared at her dumbly as she slashed the nearest one across his
midsection with her lightsaber bayonet.
The other three Peace Brigaders' eyes went wide with shock as she shot a
second one, then stabbed a third one in the heart. Before she could take out the fourth one, he
dropped out of his chair with a hole in his chest from a blaster fired by a
Noghri coming up through the hatch.

"Antenna!" Alema Rar shouted
as she hauled the Noghri the rest of the way up through the hatch and shoved
him aside. She quickly jumped back down
onto the roof of the command center.
Another Noghri had already found the communications cable. Alema Rar cut through it, and anything else
that looked important.

Then Alema Rar let out a sigh
of relief. At least now the frakkin'
Peace Brigaders can't call for help.
Now they had to get into the command center.

Alema Rar dropped back down
onto the snowy ground, and was joined by the two demolitions troopers. They quickly began setting up their
explosives on the command center's blast doors.

A handful of seconds later,
the bomb was ready. The two demolitions
troopers announced it over the comlink as they stepped around to the side of
the command center. Alema Rar glanced around
to make sure everyone else was out of the way, then joined them. She could sense nine or ten people inside,
but none of them were near the doors.
They were definitely alert, but none of them seemed to be panicked. Maybe they didn't know they were being
attacked.

The bomb exploded five
seconds later. Alema Rar and the two
demolitions troopers went back to inspect the damage. There was a crater about thirty centimeters
deep, and perhaps a meter across. The
demolitions troopers quickly began setting up a bigger one.

Alema Rar stepped over to
check out the barracks' blast doors. The
Peace Brigaders had to notice a bomb going off on their command center. The ones in the barracks should be coming out
to see what was going on—probably with blasters firing away.

The barracks doors remained
closed though. Alema Rar was about to
see how her demolitions troopers were doing when she saw the doors leading to
the prisoners opening. Then she felt the
prisoners inside start to get very worried.

It took Alema Rar a moment to
comprehend what was happening. The
frakkin' Peace Brigaders are going to freeze the prisoners to death!

Alema Rar muttered a curse
and rushed back to the command center blast doors. The two demolitions troopers had the
second—bigger—bomb set. Before they
could ignite it though, Alema Rar's communications trooper commed her.

She told her that someone
inside the command center identifying himself as Captain Jakkobs was trying to
talk her. She also said that he was
broadcasting over an open comlink, so they could all hear him. Alema Rar thanked her, ran through a quick
Jedi calming exercise, then switched comm channels.

"This is ... Commander
Alema Rar of the New Republic," she said over the comlink. She bit back a few more choice words. She didn't identify herself as a Jedi
either. They didn't need to know that
right now.

As she spoke, she reached out
with the Force to get a feel for the people in the command center. They were mostly worried, and a little
scared. None of them seemed to be on the
verge of panicking though.

"I'm Captain Jakkobs of the
Peace Brigade," a human sounding voice replied.
"I assume you're here to free the prisoners. They'll start freezing to death in about ten
minutes. You can try and save them, or
continue attacking us. If you do choose
to continue this attack, then I'll make sure as many of them die as possible."

Alema Rar could use the Force
to block the cold from the entrance to the prison, but she knew she couldn't
keep it in place long enough to ferry all the prisoners to the passenger
liner  especially if the rest of the Peace Brigaders in the barracks chose to
start fighting. She felt like she could
get into command center in ten minutes.
The problem was, Captain Jakkobs was very confident he could kill the
majority of the prisoners. Alema Rar had
come here to rescue them, not win a pointless battle against some Peace Brigade
thugs. She had to listen to the Force
for guidance.

"What will you tell your
Yuuzhan Vong masters when you don't have their prisoners?" Alema Rar asked.

That definitely caused a
reaction. They were very concerned about
what the scarheads would do to them if they didn't have two thousand prisoners
for them.

"We've got a supply ship due
in the morning. We'll just hitch a ride,
and disappear somewhere," Captain Jakkobs said confidently.

Alema Rar thought a
moment. Admiral Kre'fey had made it
clear she had to either rescue the prisoners or scratch the mission as expeditiously as possible.
There was no way she could still be here in the morning. She certainly didn't want to spend the night
freezing her lekku off.

"Piloted by a skinny human,"
she replied. "About forty, blond
hair? Goes by the name Koddy?"

There was a noticeable pause
over the comlink.

"Yeah," Captain Jakkobs
replied fearfully.

Even though they were
speaking over a comlink, and she was wearing a cold weather mask, Alema Rar
flashed a predatory smile.

Alema Rar chuckled. "How do you think we found out about this
place?" she asked.

There was another noticeable
silence over the comlink. Alema Rar
could sense the Peace Brigaders' dread as the realization sunk in.

"Frakk," Captain Jakkobs
finally replied in dismay.

Alema Rar waited several
seconds before replying. "There's only
one ship leaving this rock before the scarheads show up." She wasn't sure exactly when that would be,
but since the prison was at capacity, she didn't think it would be very
long. "If you surrender, I'll allow you
to be on it."

Once again there was several
seconds of silence over the comlink.

"We surrender," Captain
Jakkobs finally responded.

"Good," Alema Rar replied
quickly. "Open the blast doors of the
command center only," she instructed him.
Then everyone will walk out single file."

"Yes Commander," he answered
dejectedly.

Alema Rar quickly switched
comm channels and instructed Lieutenant Koflan's team to stay in position,
covering the barracks. Then she told
four of her Noghri to get ready to go into the command center with her. She wasn't about to give the Peace Brigaders
a chance to surprise her. She told the
other two, and the two demolitions troopers, to handle the people coming out of
the command center.

As the blast doors began to
open, Alema Rar's senses  including the Force  were alert for danger. The moment there was enough space, she rushed
in, carbine with deactivated lightsaber leading the way. She immediately began sweating from the
increased temperature. Four of her
Noghri were right behind her.

"Hands up!" Alema Rar
screamed as she swept her blaster down the line of people walking towards her.

The seven men and two women
instantly stopped and obeyed. Alema Rar
reached out with the Force to sense if anyone else was inside. When she reached the last Peace Brigader, she
stopped.

"Is anyone else in here!?"
she demanded, pointing her blaster carbine at the woman's chest from less than
a meter away.

Two of the Noghri moved past
them, searching the building.

"N  No," the woman answered,
trembling as her eyes followed the Noghri a moment, then went back to Alema
Rar's blaster carbine.

Panicky people weren't the
easiest to read with the Force.
Considering Alema Rar didn't sense anyone else though, she believed
her. Two more Noghri kept hustling the
rest of the Peace Brigaders through the blast doors.

"Do you have any weapons on
you?" Alema Rar asked her in a slightly calmer voice.

"N  No," she answered, still
trembling.

Alema Rar reached down and
opened her overcoat to cool off. "Do you
know how to operate the controls for the prison and barracks doors?" she asked
her.

Alema Rar swung her carbine
underneath her left arm, out of the way.
Then she stepped forward and began searching the woman for weapons while
one of her Noghri covered her. When she
finished, she pulled out a pair of binders, and slapped them around her wrists
in front of her.

"Let's go," Alema Rar said,
pushing her back towards the interior of the command center.

The woman was in her
mid-twenties, several centimeters taller than Alema Rar, with black hair. She was also a few kilos heavier than Alema
Rar.

Alema Rar took the woman into
the control room while the Noghri swept the building for Peace Brigade
holdouts. There was a stack of blaster
pistols on one of the desks. The woman
stayed away from them without being told.
She was practically trembling with fear.
The problem was, Alema Rar needed her thinking rationally for the next
little bit.

"Hey, what's your name?"
Alema Rar asked her as he sat her down in a chair at the control panel.

The woman stared up at her
for a few seconds. "What?" she asked,
holding her cuffed hands defensively in front of her.

"What's your name?" Alema Rar
repeated, trying to calm her with the Force.

"Sairri," she finally
answered. "Sairri Stavver."

"Well Sairri," Alema Rar said
as she sat down a chair next to her, between her and the blasters on the
desk. "I need you to take a deep breath
and relax okay. No one is going to hurt
you."

Alema Rar opened her overcoat
all the way as she watched Sairri take a couple of deep breaths. She also sensed her calm down somewhat,
although she was still highly agitated.
Alema Rar assumed it was from being captured.

Before Alema Rar could say
anything else, the two Noghri that were searching the building entered the
room, and announced it was clear. They
also told her they had found a small weapons closet that had about ten blaster
rifles, ten pistols, and two E-Web heavy repeating blasters in it. They said there were some grenades and extra
power packs as well.

Alema Rar instructed them to
take the E-Webs and anything else they needed, and have Lieutenant Koflan
deploy them as he saw fit. Then she had
to calm Sairri down a second time.

"Now Sairri, I need you to
close all the prison doors, but leave them open about half-a-meter, okay. Can you do that?"

"Yes," she replied, leaning
forward and reaching out towards the controls with her cuffed hands.

Alema Rar kept alert for
deception from her through the Force.
The control panel was laid out in a simple graphical design. The main doors for the prison were easy to
spot. There were additional doors
several meters inside the main ones.
Each of the twenty housing units also had a pair of doors. There were
also controls for the barracks and command center doors, as well as
communications.

Sairri slid the doors closed,
leaving them slightly open. "I'm not
sure exactly how far open they are," she explained as she leaned back. "But that should be about half-a-meter."

Alema Rar had no interest in
fighting nearly three dozen Peace Brigaders, even if she had superior troops,
and position. "Can you keep the barracks
doors closed from here?"

"No," Sairri replied. "They can be opened or closed from here or
there." She looked down at her binders,
and fidgeted in them a bit.

Alema Rar thought she seemed
to be about to say something else, but she remained silent. The Force was prompting her to find out. "You have something else to add?" she asked
firmly, influencing her with the Force at the same time.

"Um, there's about thirty
guard droids in the barracks too," Sairri said softly. "We keep them hidden from the scarheads."

Alema Rar's eyes went wide in
shock. Frakk! In a split-second she had activated her
comlink. "There are guard droids in the
barracks. If the doors open, treat the
forces inside as hostile. Repeat, there
are about thirty guard droids and thirty-five Peace Brigaders in the barracks,
if the blast doors open, treat them as hostile."

There was a chorus of
acknowledgments from her troops. Alema
Rar ran through another Jedi calming exercise.
She had two dozen special-ops troopers, with two rocket launchers and
two E-Webs. There was no way she could
evacuate two thousand prisoners with the droids and Peace Brigaders nearby.

Next Alema Rar contacted the
transport that they had arrived on. She
ordered them to power up, and get to her position as soon as possible. Then she contacted their bigger transport and
passenger liner, and ordered them to head this way as well. The liner would go into a low geosynchronous
orbit so the two transports wouldn't have to travel far to ferry the prisoners
back and forth. Then Alema Rar turned
her attention back to her prisoner.

"Let's go," Alema Rar told
Sairri, taking her by her upper arm.
After a few steps towards the door, Alema Rar let go of her so she could
zip up her coat again. A dozen meters or
so later, they arrived outside, back in the freezing cold.

Lieutenant Koflan had moved
the captured Peace Brigaders into the prisoner area, and had the two
demolitions troopers and several prisoners keeping an eye on them. He had three troopers in the observation
post, and two more on the roof of the command center.

One of the E-Webs was just to
the side of the command center, as close as they could get it and still cover
the barracks blast doors. The other one
was just inside the prison doors. The
rest of the troopers were spread out in the snow. The sniper and rocket launcher teams were
still in place as well.

Alema Rar activated the
comlink that was built into her hood.
Then she began issuing orders. "I
want Lieutenant Koflan and five people inside the outer prison doors. I want four people in the observation
post. The sniper and rocket teams stay
where you are. The two people on the
E-Web next to the command center stay there.
Everyone else I want inside the command center."

There was another chorus of
acknowledgments as they moved to obey Alema Rar's orders. Instead of heading for the prison though,
Lieutenant Koflan came to her.

"We've got quite a few
prisoners inside that claim to be military.
They want to help. I told them
I'd pass the message along," he told her over the howling wind.

There were ten blaster rifles
and ten pistols in the command center's weapons closet, plus the blaster
pistols in the control room. Alema Rar
knew that military could mean anything from highly trained crack-commandos to
remote reserve militia that only cleaned up after natural disasters. She didn't have time to find out what sort of
experience they had, and she wasn't about to give someone a weapon for the
first time in ten years if she didn't have to.

"Tell them thanks, but we
have everything under control right now," Alema Rar replied. "And make sure the Peace Brigaders that we
captured don't cause any problems."

"I want to talk to the people
in the barracks," Alema Rar told her once they got back in the control
room. "And tell me who's in charge over
there." As she spoke, she opened her
coat again, and began pulling off her gloves.

"Um, it should be Lieutenant
Grienn," Sairri replied as she reached towards the controls. "Go ahead," she said, nodding towards Alema
Rar a couple of moments later.

"This is Commander Alema Rar
of the New Republic," she said over the control panel comlink. "I would like to speak to whoever is in
charge of the Peace Brigaders in the barracks."
At the same time, Alema Rar reached out with the Force to get a sense of
the people in the barracks.

She also pulled her overcoat
and hood completely off, and put her regular comlink headset back on. That left her in her cold-weather-combat
jumpsuit, thick outer pants, and boots.

There was silence. Alema Rar looked questioningly at Sairri, who
glanced at the controls, and nodded her head in consent. After several seconds, Alema Rar repeated the
message. The third time, she added, "I
know you are receiving this."

"This is Lieutenant Grienn,"
someone finally replied. "Talk."

"Lieutenant, in case you
haven't noticed, my forces have taken over your command center. If you surrender, then you and your people
can leave this rock aboard my ship. If
not, then you can stay and explain to the scarheads why you don't have their
prisoners."

Alema Rar didn't mention that
she knew about the droids. After several
seconds of silence he replied.

"Okay," Lieutenant Grienn
answered. "We surrender. We're coming out."

Alema Rar listened to his
words over the comlink, and did her best to sense his intentions with the
Force. She was sure he was lying. He didn't feel like he had given up.

"Actually I need to alert my
forces so they don't open fire," Alema Rar quickly lied. "I'll contact you in a couple of minutes."

There was a brief pause. "Okay," he responded. "We await your signal."

Alema Rar sensed he was still
deceiving her, but not lying that time.
Maybe that meant he had believed her lie. She quickly switched comlinks to talk to her
troops again.

"The Peace Brigaders in the
barracks are still hostile. If the blast
doors open, treat it as an attack," she announced over the comlink.

There was another chorus of
acknowledgments. Then Alema Rar
contacted her transport to get its ETA.
The pilot told her they would be there in about three minutes. Alema Rar told him to pull up the map of the
prison complex on his HUD, and ensure he knew which building was the barracks.

Once that was done, Alema Rar
had about three minutes to kill. One of
her Noghri was by the door of the control room, and the rest were near the
command center blast doors. Sairri was
sitting silently in the chair, looking down at the binders on her wrists again.

"So, why did you join up with
the Peace Brigade?" Alema Rar asked her.

Sairri paused a moment before
replying. "My husband joined, and I went
with him," she answered with a shrug.

Alema Rar noticed she said went,
and not came, implying that she wasn't with the Peace Brigade
anymore. "So where's hubby now?" she
asked casually, hoping he wasn't in the barracks. Sairri probably wouldn't be as cooperative
after she blasted her husband into little bits.

"He died a couple of months
ago," she replied softly. "On Ylesia."

Alema Rar idly wondered if
she had killed him when they had captured the Peace Brigade Senate and that
traitor Pwoe. "So why are you still with
them?" Alema Rar asked her. "Do you
believe the scarheads are going to win?"

"I don't know," Sairri
responded, seemingly to both questions.

Alema Rar could sense she
really wasn't sure. She however,
was very sure, at least about the outcome of the war.

Sairri didn't respond for
several seconds. When she did, it was
only to change the subject. "I don't
think Lieutenant Grienn is really planning on surrendering," she said. "He's really a believer in the cause."

"Me neither," Alema Rar
agreed with a nod. "That's why I talked
them into waiting before they came out."

"Are you a Jedi?" Sairri
asked her, changing the subject again.

Alema Rar had only used her
lightsaber in the observation post. She
had used the title Commander with dealing with the Peace Brigaders. She didn't think she was famous enough to be
known my sight, especially with all the cold-weather gear she was wearing.

"What makes you say that?"
she replied out of curiosity.

"Isn't that a lightsaber?"
Sairri asked, gesturing towards the durasteel cylinder attached to the
underside of her blaster carbine.

Alema Rar glanced down,
slightly impressed she had recognized it in such an unusual location. "Yes, it is," she responded. "And yes, I am."

Sairri remained silent for a
few seconds. "Can't you just kill
everyone in the barracks with a wave of your hand?"

Alema Rar couldn't help but
burst out with laughter. "Not quite,"
she answered. "If a Jedi could kill with
a wave of their hand, we would have already won."

Before Sairri could say anything
else, Alema Rar received a comm. It was
the pilot of her transport, telling her that he had arrived at the prison
complex, and was hovering in place. She
told him to stand by.

While she had been chatting
with Sairri, Alema Rar had been going over her plan in her mind. She was sure that Lieutenant Grienn wasn't
planning on surrendering. However, she
wasn't quite ready to slaughter them all based solely on what she felt through
the Force, and Sairri's opinion. She
flipped her comlink over to broadcast to all of her troops, and the transport.

"This is Alema Rar. The barracks blast doors will be opening in a
few moments. If anyone sees droids, or
is fired upon, then everyone, including the transport, is cleared to return
fire, is that understood?"

There
was a chorus of acknowledgments. Alema
Rar made sure the transport crew understood, as they had the most
firepower. It had a pair of
starfighter-grade laser cannons, and a concussion missile launcher. Far more than enough to deal with thirty guard
droids and as many Peace Brigaders. Once
she was sure everyone knew what to do, she told Sairri to contact the other
Peace Brigaders again.

"Alright Lieutenant Grienn,
my troops know that you are surrendering, you can come out," Alema Rar said
over the comlink.

"That took quite a while," he
replied. "I hope you weren't setting up
an ambush?"

The instant she finished
talking, she let go of the transmit button, and turned back to Sairri.

"Can you make the blast doors
open faster?" she asked her.

"I  I don't know," she
replied, looking at the controls. "We've
never tried to find out."

"Well, if they try to close
the doors again, make sure they open all the way," Alema Rar instructed her.

"Yes Ma'am," Sairri responded
obediently.

Alema Rar really wanted to be
outside in the fight with her troops, but she knew she could do more here. She did start putting her overcoat and hood
back on though. A moment later, she
heard the transport's laser canons shooting, and a few seconds later, its
concussion missile launcher. At the same
time, she felt the Peace Brigaders in the barracks dying. Even though they were the enemy, it was hard
to feel so much death through the Force.

The shooting was over in
about twenty seconds, although it seemed like much longer. Finally there was silence.

"We're going in to check for
survivors," Sergeant Vikkors announced over the comlink.

By the time they made it
outside, several more troopers had moved into the barracks. Alema Rar had no trouble seeing parts of at
least a dozen guard droids scattered about, along with quite a few bodies  and
parts. She activated her comlink, and
began issuing more orders.

"I want the transport on the
ground as close to the prison as you can get.
Leave two people in the observation post and the E-Web by the command
center covering the barracks. Sergeant
Vikkors, once your team is finished clearing the barracks building for threats,
let me know. Lieutenant Koflan, let's
start loading up prisoners. Leave the
Peace Brigaders for last," Alema Rar instructed them.

There was another chorus of
acknowledgments as they began obeying her.
Then Alema Rar turned to her prisoner.
"Barracks," she told her, gesturing towards the open blast doors with
her carbine.

As they walked, Alema Rar
reached out with the Force to see if she could sense any Peace Brigaders still
alive in the barracks. By the time they
reached the barracks, Alema Rar was pretty sure there weren't any left alive.

The transport set down with
its ramp just a few meters from the prison doors. In minutes Lieutenant Koflan had it filled to
capacity with rescued prisoners.

It took them nearly three
hours to get all of the prisoners, plus the Peace Brigaders, onto the passenger
liner. Alema Rar had her troops salvage
as much of the weapons and equipment as they could from the barracks and command
center. She had also had her two
demolitions troopers blow the control room up so it couldn't be used again.

Alema Rar waited until the
very last transport to leave. It was the
smaller one she had arrived on. Besides
her, only, Sairri, the other eight Peace Brigaders they had captured, and her
special-ops troopers were aboard. There
were also some containers of equipment they were taking from the prison,
including one with several hundred sets of binders, stun cuffs, shock shackles,
and even slave collars.

As they took off, Alema Rar
had the pilot blast the observation post into twisted wreckage. Then she had him shoot through the open blast
doors of the command center, just to make sure the Peace Brigade couldn't use
the place again. Finally they headed for
the passenger liner.

Alema Rar and two dozen
commandos had rescued just over two thousand prisoners from a Peace Brigade
prison, and hadn't had a single injury, much less lost anyone. She sat silently contemplating that. For the first time since the beginning of the
war, she had been on a mission, and no one had gotten killed. After a few seconds, she began crying softly
to herself.

"Hey Alema Rar, you okay?"
Sergeant Vikkors asked from the seat next to her.

"Yeah," she lied, quickly
covering her eyes with her goggles so he wouldn't see her tears. "I'm fine,” she said in a clipped tone that
stopped him from commenting further.

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